Jenna dipped her fingers in the water. It was crisp and cold. Gregory leaned over and did the same thing.
“Some say this comes from an underground spring straight from the Appalachians,” he said. “I have my doubts, of course. The closest Appalachian foothill is up in Alabama, a long way from the Florida marshes. But who knows? Maybe this water has traveled underground all that way. Just to spit out in these rocks.”
He sat on a dry patch of rock and pushed a smattering of leaves away to make room for Jenna. With her camera still hanging around her neck—no way was she going to trust it sitting alone near all this water—she sat next to him. After pulling her shoes off, she dunked her feet in the cool water.
“Nice, huh?”
“Very.” She leaned over and cupped her hand and poured water over her calves, up to her knees. Sweat on the back of her neck evaporated, leaving her with a chill.
They sat in silence a moment, the only sound the trickling water and movement all around them in the forest.
“Now your turn,” Gregory said, his voice low, as if to leave the peace undisturbed. “Tell me about you. Have you figured out yet why you’re here at Halcyon?”
“Not really. Maybe my epiphany is still coming.”
“Okay. Well, tell me about your photography then, what you do with it at home.”
She shook her head. “I don’t do much with it at home. I don’t have time.”
“Sure you do.”
“What? How do you know?”
“We make time for things that are important.”
“But isn’t that what this place is about? Time to connect to our art—time and space that’s not in our regular lives? It’s all I’ve heard about since I got here.”
“Sure, sure, that’s what we say.” He reached down and flicked water into a school of minnows. “And it’s true to an extent. But I stand by the idea that if something is important enough, you’ll squeeze it in. In the margins. Here, the margins are stretched, but when you get back home, everything goes back to normal. The passion, the drive has to be there. You get it?”
She nodded. He didn’t know anything about her life. Of course a man would think it was as easy as just picking up the camera. But it was never that simple.
Then he reached over and lifted her camera from around her neck. She grabbed on to the strap. “What are you doing?”
“May I?”
She let go and averted her eyes. She didn’t want to see his expression as he scrolled through the images she’d captured over the last handful of days.
After a moment, with her eyes still on the water, she sensed rather than saw him shake his head. “These are crap,” he murmured.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re taking shots you think you need to take.” He scrolled through her images. “Sun shining on the water, palm branches, a pretty little mound of wildflowers. This is amateur. I’m just guessing here, but I’d say there’s more to you than this.”
“And what makes you say that?” She forgot about trying to be careful. “You haven’t been around long enough to find out anything about me. I’ve been floundering, trying to figure out what I’m doing here. I thought I was supposed to have a mentor to offer some guidance.”
“Having a mentor, especially one like me, isn’t going to help you find your muse, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
She stood and took her camera back.
“Go ahead. Get mad. Use it. Put it in here.” He reached up and tapped her camera.
She turned and crossed back over the rocks the way they’d come, trying not to slip and embarrass herself as she made her exit.
“You’re gonna need thicker skin to work with me.”
She stopped and spun around, almost losing her footing in the process. She reached out and grabbed a low-hanging limb for balance. “If you remember, I didn’t ask to work with you. And since it sounds like you aren’t that excited to be working with me, why are you here? Why didn’t you just go the other way when you saw me back there on the bridge?”
“A couple reasons. One, I’m the photography mentor at Halcyon. Seeing as you’re the only other photographer here, you are my job. Two, Max asked me to watch out for you.”
“He did what? When?”
“He called me up and told me a friend of his was coming and asked me to . . . well, just to make sure you were okay.”
Unable to wrap her head around Max and Gregory working together to keep tabs on her, Jenna just stared.
“Don’t be mad at him. I could tell he cares a lot about you. I told him I’d keep my eye on you.”
“That’s just perfect.” Still holding the limb, she stepped carefully down the rocks to the firm ground.
“You have to find your creative eye on your own,” he called. She resisted the urge to turn and toss another barb his way. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s there already and you just need to uncover it. That’s why you’re here, right?”
seventeen
Jenna
On Monday of the second week at Halcyon, Jenna squatted low among broken, stripped pine trees and thin saplings struggling to push themselves through the thick underbrush of The Bottoms. She’d heard of the place that morning at breakfast. Another artist had mentioned it, an area of the retreat where, a couple of years before, a tornado had ripped through during a summer storm.
“Everything else around here is so lush and alive,” Mark, a painter sitting at her table, had said. “I don’t know why they don’t just clean it up. Or clear-cut it to get rid of the broken tree trunks and let everything start over.”
“They can’t do that,” a woman said. “It’s a nature preserve. They have to let Mother Nature do her thing.”
Over the woman’s left shoulder, Jenna saw Gregory filling his coffee mug a few paces away. His back was to them, but Jenna sensed he was listening. Or maybe he was just taking way too long to fill up that mug.
“Yeah, well, nature hasn’t done its thing yet. It’s a wasteland.”
Jenna rose and picked up her tray. Gregory said her images were amateur. Too pretty. A wasteland should be perfect.
Outside, she’d almost made it to the start of the path when he called to her. She turned slowly, unsure of what to say—or what he’d say—after how they parted at the waterfall a few days before.
“Do me a favor,” he said in place of a greeting. He set his coffee down and pulled a camera from his bag. “Play around with this today.”
She gasped. “Is that a Rollei?”
He nodded.
She took the camera from him, her fingers finding the familiar crevices and notches. A photographer out in Wyoming had let her use his Rollei and she’d fallen a little bit in love. “Why are you giving me this?”
“Just trying something different.” He shrugged. “Have fun with it. See what you think.”
She tried to hand it back to him. “I already have a camera. Anyway, I don’t think changing cameras is going to fix my problems.”
“You’re right. It won’t. But changing your focus will. Just try it.” He shouldered his bag again and picked up his coffee. “See how it feels.”
Now, squatting in the bright sunshine, she was determined to prove him wrong. It wasn’t that she wanted to take bad shots—to squander her time, to waste her opportunity—but she kept hearing his words. “This is amateur. You’re taking shots you think you need to take.”
She’d known those shots weren’t great before he looked at them—and she hated that those were all she had to show him—but hearing the words out loud made something inside her deflate. And because of that, it made her angry. She’d come here to open herself up to creativity, not have someone squash it.
So she did what she always did when someone made her feel small and inadequate—she pushed in the opposite direction. Here she was in The Bottoms, searching for the muse Gregory said she wouldn’t find. Broken trees? Check. Sun-parched grass? Check. A barren space ruined by a storm? Check.
&n
bsp; But in what was supposed to be a wasteland, all she saw was life. Yes, much of the area was damaged, but she saw bright-green vines encircling twisted and broken tree trunks, golden wildflowers growing out of a hole in a tree lying on its side, a white-tailed deer bounding over a section of tangled fencing. It was exquisite, so different from the pretty scenes she’d tried to capture the week before.
Though she still wanted to be mad at Gregory, it seemed his harsh words had given her a necessary shove. She wasn’t sure if this was the creative eye he wanted her to uncover, but it seemed her eye was better suited for finding the inferior, the unloved, the damaged, and The Bottoms provided an abundance of them all.
She worked for a while with her own camera, capturing the sharp colors and angles of light. When she switched to Gregory’s Rollei, which produced square-format black-and-white photos, it was all about texture and shadows. The Rolleiflex TLR was what most people associated with old-time photos. The photographer held the camera at chest level and looked down into the finder instead of holding it to the face and looking straight ahead.
Shooting with a camera like this was a whole different experience than using a standard camera, and it took her a while to get used to it—holding it steady at the correct level, remembering that the mirror reversed the viewfinder image. It also forced her to slow down, to think about a shot before hitting the button. Once she got the hang of it though, she was able to focus on the trees above her, balancing on top of mounds of sand and dirt to get an angle right, taking her time, enjoying the peace.
She wondered about the film though—did Gregory develop it himself? Take it into town to get it developed? Other than the Epson printer that printed digital shots, she hadn’t seen evidence of a photo lab or darkroom in any of Halcyon’s studios. One thing was for sure—she was glad for the lack of an LCD screen on the camera. No need to waste time seeing how the pictures were coming out. She could continue shooting and just imagine she was capturing things the way she wanted.
When her growling stomach told her lunchtime had come and gone, she paused and ate a granola bar in the shade. As she rested she pulled her phone out of her bag. She didn’t even check to see whether she had service, she just wanted to see the photo she used as her home screen, a recent shot of Addie and Walsh. They sat in the middle of their front yard, searching for the one four-leaf clover they were sure they’d find.
Jenna had taken the photo before the girls heard her approach. The late-afternoon light was perfect, almost creating a halo around them, and the girls filled the shot in a way that would have made Max proud. Maybe not Gregory—he’d probably find something wrong with it.
She’d shown the photo to Sam one morning as they drank their coffee together.
“They’re beautiful, just like their mother.” He set his coffee down and looked closer at the photo. “The blonde one looks like you.”
“You just say that because of the hair.”
He sat back in his chair and picked up his cup again. “Do they look like their father?”
Jenna’s stomach did that uncomfortable clenching thing it did whenever anyone brought up the girls’ father.
“Maybe a little.” She blew a stray curl out of her eyes and felt his careful gaze on her.
“How long has it been? Since the divorce?”
Jenna stared at him a moment without speaking.
“I’m sorry, I . . .” He inhaled. “I just assumed you were divorced. Is he . . . ?” From his pained look, she knew she had to say something quick before he got the impression she was a widow.
“No, no, that’s not it. It’s fine. It’s been, uh . . . I’ve been on my own for a few years now.”
By the sweet and well-timed grace of God, Mario waved at her then, allowing her to sidestep any more questions she didn’t want to answer.
A bird chirped nearby and brought her back to the present. She shifted her position against the rough bark of the tree and stretched her legs out in front of her. What she’d said to Sam was mostly true—as long as five, going on six, years was still considered “a few.” It was just easier to gloss over the truth than spill it across the clean table in the back corner of Full Cup as Carrie Underwood blared on the speakers.
Her girls had had no choice in who their father was, even who their mother was. Whenever she wished she could pack up and head west again, or north, or anywhere but where she was, she thought of her girls, touched their skin, listened to their laugh, and reminded herself that they only had her. They depended on her for everything. So what she was doing now—these two weeks—it was all for them. She owed them at least that much.
That evening she stopped by her cabin to change into clothes that weren’t damp with sweat and speckled with sandspurs. Outside, the air was alive with warmth and the scent of something sweet. Around the edge of the lake, canoes in various faded colors jostled against each other, tied by thick ropes to nearby trees as if someone had been afraid they’d drift away. One of them—it looked like it used to be painted red—had slipped from its rope and was trailing away from the others.
She looked around. After a moment, she slipped her shoes off and walked to the edge of the lake. The water was warm as bathwater. She lifted the hem of her skirt and took a couple more steps until she could grab the canoe to pull it up to the shore.
It wasn’t until something rough bit into her fingers that she noticed the tattoo of jagged, rusty holes on the sides of the hull. The hole at the front where the rope had been tied was rusted out, leaving sharp edges and splotchy orange patches. The pads of her fingers were coated in the same orange rust, and a spot of blood seeped out of a shallow cut. She swished her hand in the water around her knees, but when she pulled it out and examined her finger, blood bloomed in a small dot.
So much for trying to do a good deed.
As she pressed her thumb and forefinger together, her gaze settled on the offending canoe. Maybe it had once held a load of laughing, frolicking kids, intent on pushing each other out. Or maybe they raced their canoe against others, seeing which team could skim across the lake the quickest. She imagined the little boat gleaming cherry red in the sun, tanned arms and legs tumbling from the sides, excited voices carrying over the water. Now it was nothing more than a mass of rust and danger.
But there was something about it. The mix of former glory and present decay. She tilted her head and caught a glimpse of the bright-green grass at the edge of the lake through a hole in the side of the canoe. Just a sliver of green against the orange rust and faded red metal. Life against death.
She tapped her fingers on her camera hanging around her neck, then pulled it up to her eye. She snapped and snapped again. After a moment, the light changed as a cloud skirted the sun. Shadows and glare, light and dark. Then, without bothering to check the outcome of her efforts on the LCD screen, she stepped out of the water, slid her feet back into her sandals, and continued to dinner.
On her way out of the dining hall, Casey called to her. Expecting to be urged to join the workshop, Jenna continued down the steps, just turning her head to speak. “I have a few things I wanted to wrap up from my work today. I’ll try to make it tomorrow night.”
“I was just going to let you know Gregory asked for you to meet him in the barn. And to bring his camera.”
Jenna paused and looked back at Casey standing at the top of the steps. “Why?”
Casey shrugged. “I’m guessing he wants to discuss your work. He is your mentor, so that’s his job.”
“Yes, as I keep being reminded.”
Casey raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll head that way.”
The path down the hill toward the barn took her away from everything else, past the lake, to a part of the preserve she hadn’t seen yet. After stopping at her cabin to retrieve Gregory’s camera, she wound her way across a low bridge that spanned a muddy creek and through a tunnel of oaks and hanging vines. Palm branches pressed in from the sides of the dirt p
ath, which opened to a clearing. A crisp white barn sat a couple hundred feet off the path, its upper casement windows open to catch the breeze.
There was no sign of life until she noticed Gregory sitting in an Adirondack chair to the side of the barn. His head was tipped back, his eyes closed, his boot-clad feet propped in another chair pulled up in front of him.
“You’re not making me clean horse stalls, are you?” Jenna called as she approached.
He opened one eye. “Funny.”
“Why are we meeting way out here?”
He dropped his feet to the ground and heaved himself out of the chair. “Come with me.”
From the outside, the barn looked like most every other barn she’d seen in the hills of Tennessee: peaked roof, weather vane on top, vertical wood siding. Even a fenced horse corral to the side. But when Gregory grabbed the handles of the double doors and slid them open, any chance of this being a standard barn evaporated. Inside, it was around the same size as Ty’s barn, but with the individual stalls taken out, the space seemed larger. No ropes hung on the wall. No straw on the floor. No animal smell.
Instead the area was sleek and modern, the faint scent of vinegar and chemicals both sharp and familiar. The floor was covered in clean, cool tiles that made Jenna want to take her shoes off and walk barefoot. The lights were low, but gallery spotlights shone on the art on the walls. A few paintings here and there—bold, impulsive jabs of color—but most were photographs. Some black and white, some color, all striking.
“Are these . . . ?” Before she could finish her thought, a particular photo caught her eye.
Gregory continued across the room toward a door at the back, but Jenna moved closer to the photo. It showed a woman and two children—obviously hers by the way she draped her arms around them. They sat on a defeated couch in a dingy room. Behind them, a wooden board covered most of a window. Black metal bars covered the rest. All three had smudges of dirt on their arms and faces. It was poverty—the kind that scared her and made her stomach hurt—but it was also joy. The children, a boy and a girl, were caught in a laugh, their faces open. The mom’s eyes were tired, and the lines around them made her look older than she probably was, but her smile was soft. Their joy—even if just temporary—radiated outward, pushing back the bonds of their bleak life.
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